Fly by Night

by Ward Larsen

  He had been right about the elevator on both counts. The shaft was indeed two feet from his pillow. And it hadn’t bothered him. He undid the clothespins on the curtains, drew them open to call the morning into his room. Davis shaved over an avocado-green sink before turning on the shower. With the handle full cold, he got lukewarm. He dressed and followed his nose to a coffeepot near the operations desk. Wherever you found pilots, you found coffee. The brew wasn’t as good as the fancy stuff he’d had a few days ago in a posh Fredericksburg cafe, but it put a check in his caffeine square.

  Antonelli’s clinic was twenty miles away, so Davis hit up Schmitt to borrow his Mercedes. Got told to piss off. Investigator-in-charge Davis insisted on something, so the chief pilot scrounged up a key from the bottom of a drawer.

  It could have been candy-apple red, deep burgundy, or just brown. The dust was so thick there was no way to tell.

  He found the dilapidated Ford pickup parked near a Dumpster at the side of the building. The odometer read 289,000 miles, which, in Davis’ experience, was about the limit for a vehicle like that. He’d been told that the truck was used by FBN’s mechanics—Johnson and the elusive Jordanian—and also shared with other wrench-turners on the airfield. The cab smelled like grease and glue, and discarded plastic packaging on the floor evidenced everything from spark plugs to potato chips. But the truck started on the first try—score one for the mechanics—and seemed to run smoothly.

  Indeed, as Davis picked up the southern road for the half-hour drive, the air conditioner blew like an Arctic wind. Davis had to smile at that. He knew all about mechanics. The original air conditioner had likely given up under the local climatic conditions, so the mechanics, on a slow day, had gone out and requisitioned something a little heavier. Something like the compressor from a Mack truck. They’d have jerry-rigged it into the old Ford’s engine compartment, serviced it until coolant was oozing from every seam. What had been a bare bones tool-wagon became a refrigerated break room, even an office where they could do their paperwork.

  The road shimmered in the early morning, the sun’s angle still low enough to reflect. Not penetrate. Along the margins, scrub-covered terrain materialized out of the dawn, a prickly array of drab color. The truck’s undercarriage creaked, and the Mack truck air conditioner spewed chunks of ice. He slowed when he reached the marker Antonelli had given him as a reference, a road sign showing the distance to Wad Rawah as twenty-one. Only somebody had crossed out twenty-one and scrawled thirty-three. It could be that the original version was wrong. Or it could be that somebody felt the need to convert miles to kilometers. Then again, maybe the town had just moved. They were nomads, after all.

  Davis looked for a turnoff, but didn’t see one. No road, no sign with an arrow, no building in the distance. Nothing but a rocky path on one side that meandered off into the desert. It looked jarring, but Davis decided this had to be the place. He yanked the steering wheel hard right, and a lousy road turned into a raw trail. The truck bounced and groaned, left a rooster tail of dust as it pounded over ruts and loose stone. A minute later he arrived. From a distance it looked like a Boy Scout jamboree, a small city of canvas and wooden poles and rope, all situated in the lee of a large hill. The tents were the open air variety, no sidewalls, some at least fifty feet wide. Military grade, he guessed, probably surplus from a war. Iraq or Afghanistan. Maybe Korea.

  Davis parked the truck, and resisted a suburban urge to lock the doors. There was no entrance to the compound, no front or back or reception area. It was just an amoebic outpost of hope in the middle of a godforsaken desert. He searched under the tents—or more accurately, tarps strung tightly over stiff wooden poles—and saw Dr. Regina Antonelli at the side of a bed. Only it wasn’t a bed, but rather a blanket on the sand. Around it, fifty other blankets. And in the next tent fifty more. There were a few raised cots, perhaps reserved for the most seriously ill. But only a few.

  Antonelli spotted him and waved. Davis maneuvered carefully through what seemed like a human minefield. The condition of the patients was all over the board. Men and women. Young and old. Expectant mothers waiting for their joyous hour. Stricken old men waiting for God. He could discern a few nurses, though no two wore a common uniform. He could tell them apart by the simple fact that they were standing and working. More telling was what was missing. There were no gurneys, beeping monitors, or IV poles. In fact, aside from the patients and blankets, there wasn’t much to advance the idea that this was even a clinic.

  He watched Antonelli inject something into the arm of her middle-aged patient. His black skin glistened in sweat, and his breathing was shallow and uneven. Davis stood at the foot of the blanket and waited for her to finish.

  “Welcome to Al Qudayr Aid Station,” she said, beginning to write on a chart. “I will be with you shortly, Mr. Davis.” When she finished writing, Antonelli set the chart in the sand near her patient’s foot. “We have a great deal of work here.”

  “I can see that.”

  “On the best day, we have nine nurses and two doctors to care for our patients.”

  He surveyed the place. “How many patients are there?”

  Antonelli shrugged. “We have no time for such trivia. We simply go from one to the next. Do what we can.”

  “This place seems pretty remote. Where do they come from?”

  “There is a village just over the hill.” She pointed toward the high dune. “Some are from there, and occasionally a group will arrive in a vehicle. But most—” she gestured toward the scrubland, “most simply come in from the desert. They walk in, sit down, and wait.”

  The man in the bed coughed, a weak, wet expulsion. His gums were bleeding and his lips were blue. Antonelli looked at him forlornly, turned away, and began walking. Davis followed. A woman lying in the sand reached out as Antonelli passed, probably more in reflex than hope. The doctor threw out a practiced smile of patience, then dodged her like a soccer player avoiding a tackle. When she was outside the tent, Antonelli paused and stood still.

  Her gaze was a faraway blank as she stared at the empty desert. Antonelli clutched her arms to her chest, and he could see anguish in her eyes, weariness in her posture. He was struck by how different she seemed, not the tough-as-nails woman who’d confronted a squad of armed men yesterday.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she replied too quickly. “I did not invite you here to perform counseling. Judging by your performance yesterday, I doubt you would be very good at it.”

  Davis said nothing.

  She clutched some more, twisted her shirt sleeve up to wipe away a tear at the corner of one eye. Antonelli then looked at him more thoughtfully.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should not burden you with my problems, Mr. Davis.”

  “It’s okay. And call me Jammer.”

  She looked at him questioningly, then tilted her head in the direction of the patient she’d been tending. “Dengue fever, day six. His circulatory system is shutting down. I don’t think he is going to survive.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the man on the blanket. He didn’t look good. Davis had seen death before, but not the kind that came in places like this. Not on this scale. He considered what to say, and only one thing came to mind.

  “How can I help?”

  The wailing voice beckoned, a tin warble from a cheap speaker outside the hangar. Fadi Jibril eased back on his heels, thankful for the distraction. He had been up all night, taking only one brief respite on the cot near the back wall. The parts from Hamburg had still not arrived, so he’d been slugging through software validation. He was comfortable with the code, getting good results, but there had been little time for integration testing. Jibril was neck deep in a fault injection series when his tired thoughts were mercifully interrupted by the call to prayer.

  If there was one constant in his life, one thing that remained steady and true, it was his faith in Allah. He pushed a diagram aside, picked up his Koran from a nearby t
able, and carefully unwrapped the protective cloth. He made his way to the sink, washed thoroughly, and started off toward the prayer room. The nearest proper mosque was in the main passenger terminal, wholly impractical for those who worked here. As such, the imam had provided a makeshift place of worship in an annex to the hangar. It was an awkward venue, gilt curtains over corrugated metal, fine rugs on cold concrete. To Jibril’s thinking, not a fitting place for holy worship. Still, the room was clean, and he could not deny its convenience, so the engineer kept with the old adage: There is no inappropriate place to pray.

  He was nearing the prayer room entrance when someone shouted his name from behind. Jibril turned and saw a lanky young soldier with a wry smile on his face.

  “Special delivery,” he said. Three boxes were piled on the concrete at his feet.

  Jibril nodded, and the soldier turned away and trotted out the door.

  Full of hope, Jibril rushed over. The parts should have arrived yesterday, and indeed probably had, but the local army contingent had a reputation for meddling with shipments. He could lodge a complaint with the imam, but at this point, he reasoned, there was little to gain. At the very least, the ruffians had never lost a shipment. None that he knew of, anyway.

  The reinforced boxes were heavy, and Jibril transferred them to his work area one by one. That done, he put the first on a bench, and opened it using the claw end of a hammer. When he saw the telemetry modules inside, Jibril’s heart sank. He double-checked the model number, studied the connectors and saw a clear mismatch. He settled heavily onto his work stool and let out a long sigh. Another setback.

  Hamburg had sent the wrong parts.

  Jibril sat still for a full minute, a cloak of despair casing his thoughts. Then, with all the deliberation he could muster, he picked up his Koran and went to the prayer room.

  Davis had never had much of a bedside manner. Fortunately, that didn’t matter. He was handy with a wrench, and what the clinic needed more than anything was to have an inoperative generator repaired. The whole tent city was off the larger electrical grid—which according to Antonelli was unreliable anyway—and depended on a pair of old diesel generators. One of these had been broken for weeks, and Davis was tasked to get the thing running.

  The clinic had some basic hand tools, and Davis found a few more under the seat of the truck. It took most of the morning, but he finally identified the problem as being in the fuel feed—a severely clogged filter and a faulty shutoff valve. The filter he simply removed. The valve Davis rehabilitated by way of brute force—hammers and wrenches, banging and bending. Neither repair was permanent, but the unit would be serviceable for a few weeks.

  It was nearly noon when he finished, and Davis was covered in grease and diesel. He went looking for Regina Antonelli, and found her in the supply tent digging deep into an almost empty box.

  “The generator is up and running,” Davis said. “But it’s only a temporary fix. I’ll need a few things to make the job permanent. I made a list of the parts, along with the make and model number of the generator. I’m not sure how long it will take to get spares like that, but maybe I can twist some arms at FBN Aviation, get them to expedite a shipment for us.”

  Antonelli eyed him, top to bottom. He had to look like he’d been in a grease pit all day. She smiled a half smile, but a smile all the same. It was just like he’d expected. Downright stunning.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Anything you can do to get replacement parts would be greatly appreciated.”

  He began cleaning his hands with a rag.

  “So how long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Since June, but my term is nearly done. Three new physicians arrive tomorrow. I’m hoping they will bring supplies to replace those we lost.”

  “So you’re leaving? Back to Italy?”

  “In a few days. I must first oversee the delivery of a shipment to a small village north of here—al-Asmat, on the Red Sea. Even in the north there is need. After two days there, I will continue to Port Sudan and take a passage home.”

  Davis nodded. “Are you looking forward to it? Going home?”

  She shrugged. “In a way. But it is a difficult transition. The people in Milan, they can be rather self-absorbed. Nice food, expensive clothing, exotic cars. It all seems rather trivial when one sees things here. To watch a thirty-year-old pregnant woman die for need of a two dollar dose of medicine—it gives one a certain perspective.”

  “I’m sure it does,” he said.

  “But I do not wish to paint myself as a saint. I too have fine clothes, a decent car, and a house twice as large as I need.”

  “I have all those things too,” he said. “Do you think less of me?”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “Sometimes I feel …” she hesitated.

  “Like you can never do enough?”

  She nodded.

  “My investigations make me feel that way sometimes. It can be frustrating.”

  “That reminds me, I have something for you.”

  Antonelli retrieved a satchel and pulled out a stack of papers that were neatly clipped together.

  “These are the load manifests you asked for. They cover the last five months. Please take them if it helps your investigation. I only ask that you return them when you are done. We must keep our records current to avoid funding cuts.”

  “I’ll make sure it all gets back to you. And thanks for digging them out, I know you’re busy. I have to get back to the airfield now, but I’ll finish with that generator when the parts arrive. I also might be able to get your sterilizer working better if—”

  “Dr. Antonelli!” a strident voice interrupted. A nurse came into the tent and rushed to Antonelli’s side. Eying Davis with caution, she leaned close and whispered into the doctor’s ear.

  Antonelli closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she said in a soft voice.

  The nurse disappeared.

  Antonelli seemed to lose her focus, much as she had earlier.

  He raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Bad news?”

  “Yes. The man I was treating when you first arrived, the dengue patient. He has died.”

  “I’m sorry,” Davis said. He really was, but he wondered why she seemed so close to this case. Maybe she’d gotten to know the man. Maybe something deeper.

  “Was he a friend?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, her voice shot with anguish.

  Davis wanted to help her find strength. He said, “Regina, there are a lot of other patients here depending on you. Being staffed so thin—you are vital to their well-being.”

  She looked up at him curiously, took a deep breath, and seemed to pull herself together. “Yes, I know. You are right. But perhaps I should have explained. The man who just died—he was the other doctor.”

  Larry Green was at his desk, ten-mile run complete, by seven in the morning. It had been less than a day since he’d forwarded Davis’ requests to Darlene Graham, and answers were already coming in. This told him that the emphasis on finding the lost Blackstar drone hadn’t wavered one bit.

  The information had again come by courier, and the papers in front of Green ranged in classification from CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET. On top were the most recent satellite and radar images of the hangar outside KNIA, Khartoum International Airport. Green had seen a lot of surveillance in his day, and what he saw here didn’t add anything new. He leafed through the rest, flicking aside a CIA overview of Sudan’s political situation, along with a security assessment on the upcoming Arab League conference in Egypt. He guessed some wonk had thrown that in just to make the file seem a little more substantial. At the bottom of the stack he found a computer disc in a plastic case. A handwritten sticky note was attached:

  Larry, Got this from a Navy cruiser that was in Gulf when FBN aircraft went down. Thought you might make something out of it. Still working on aircraft histories for the two tail numbers JD gave you and 121.5 records. DG

  Green took the disc, which was dated Se
ptember 20, the date of the accident, and slid it into the drive on his desktop computer. The screen came alive with a familiar picture, one Green recognized as a slight variation of other displays he’d seen. It was a radar tape, a digital record of what some Navy cruiser had been painting on the night of the crash. Green could see that certain data readouts and information bars at the top of the screen had been sanitized, blacked out electronically to mask sensitive information regarding the range and operational modes of the ship’s radar. The Navy might be helping, but turf wars were eternal.

  Green oriented himself to the display and saw that north was up. There were no geographic boundaries drawn on the screen, but instead the references used by air traffic controllers—airspace boundaries. Green knew the general area in question, so the layout of the airspace made for a pretty clear picture. Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Sudan. For a pilot, these were hard lines you didn’t cross, not unless you either A: had the necessary authorizations and a carefully filed flight plan, or B: were in the mood for an armed fighter escort.

  As the recording began, Green saw a dozen commercial flights floating across the screen, tiny white airplane symbols with blocked data tags to give their altitude, call sign, and airspeed. There were a handful of other aircraft on the screen, but data on these had been blacked out—once again, the Navy keeping itself to itself.

  A time counter at the bottom of the screen told Green he was watching a forty-two-minute show. Ninety seconds in, he saw an airplane take off from Khartoum International. Call sign:Air Sahara 007. Air Sahara was FBN Aviation’s corporate call sign. He watched the blip move north and climb. In terms of performance, he was used to watching military fighters and commercial jets, so the whole show looked like it was running in slow motion as the ancient DC-3 clawed for altitude and ambled toward the Red Sea. He also noticed an occasional shadow to the primary return, a second tiny square of light that blinked occasionally into view, then disappeared. Green had seen plenty of echoes like it in his years working with radar, and he was mildly surprised that the Navy’s shipboard gear wasn’t better. Once the airplane was over what had to be the Red Sea, it started a turn, then another. Soon it was tracking what looked like a nice lazy holding pattern over the water.